August 23, 2011 -- ANGLE plc (AIM : AGL) is delighted to announce that Parsortix Inc (“Parsortix”), its 83% owned portfolio company which specialises in medical diagnostics has been issued a U.S. Patent Number 7,993,908, entitled “Microstructure for Particle and Cell Separation, Identification, Sorting, and Manipulation”.

This patent is the first in what is expected to be a series of United States and International patents for Parsortix’s proprietary devices and methods for isolating cells from blood and other mixed cell suspensions. The proprietary devices and methods can be used for a wide range of medical diagnostic applications including, for example, the isolation of disseminated or circulating tumour cells from cancer patient samples and the capture of a developing foetus’ cells from a sample of its mother’s peripheral blood.

Using Parsortix’s now-patented technology, cells can be differentiated from one another based on their size, shape, deformability, or a combination of these characteristics. Unlike many cell-separating technologies that rely on antibody binding, the Parsortix technology does not require target cells to express and display antibody-binding protein for separation and, as a result, substantially reduces problems sometimes associated with that approach such as the risk of false positives or false negatives.

In addition to capturing rare cells in a population, the Parsortix technology enables further identification or characterisation through molecular or biochemical analysis.

Parsortix Chief Executive, Dr. Shane Booth, commented:

“Parsortix’s technology represents a new platform upon which identification and isolation of rare cells from mixed populations can be performed. Award of this patent substantiates our technological and consequent commercial capability and will be the basis of product development activity with which we intend to solve significant barriers to clinical and research capability.”

ANGLE Founder and Chief Executive, Andrew Newland, commented:

“This is a major step forward for ANGLE’s development of Parsortix. The validation of the Parsortix’s capability to successfully isolate cancer cells in blood is on track. We continue to be greatly encouraged by ongoing progress and look forward to reporting positive results in due course.”